Jan Gray:  

I really loved Central and my fellow students, but what you guys/gals didn't know was that I was too shy to make new friends. I really was a wallflower who just wanted to NOT be noticed. I heard later that some people thought I was stuck up, but, honestly, I was just TOO DARN shy to speak up and say Hello because in grade school I had been bullied by a bunch of hateful girls. (That happened when my parents moved us for one year to NLR. My elementary school was Park Hill, and those mean girls made me even more reluctant to make friends. Those spoiled brats even tried toget one of their friends, a tough looking girl, beat me up in the girls' rest room. they blocked my way, forming a human wall, so I could not leave. When I saw my path blocked as I tried to leave and go to class, the "rough looking" girl was at the front, and I asked, "What's going on?" One of the girls said, "There's going to be a fight." I asked, "Who's fighting?" Then, she said YOU are, and the path parted for the hard looking girl to come toward me. Well, I didn't know what to do then, except lean against the sink as she grabbed on eof my legs to make me fall. Thankfully, she had a ponytail, so I b alanced myself against the sink, grabbed her ponytail and began slapping her in the face until she cried. I hated to do that, but from that moment on, the Park Hill spoiled brats left me alone, but they also made sure I had NO friends at all. I was the outsider until the end of the school year, which was a miserable one. I walked to school and as soon as they noticed me crossing the street,they ganged up and started yelling insults at me. I didn't tell my parents, nor my teacher, so it kept happening every day until I finished 6th grade. Thus, Central sort of scared me to death. I did not know how to make friends, so please know that I did not think I was better than anyone else. I was simply shy and fearful from the previous events in my school life. In fact, when living in Park Hill, I want6ed to join the Girl Scouts, but "suddenly" they had no room for another member, the lady who ran the park Hill chapter told my mother. I can say one thing that came out of it that was good: Later in life, I always stuck up for the underdog. As for the rest of my life3, I marreid too young and moved to Buffalo, New York, taking the name Jan Ervolina. I had two children, a boy, Robert Ervolina, who now owns a very successful financial business in Buffalo. His little sister, Christie, lives in GA where I am now living, and where she works as a first grade teacher. I became a college teacher, eventually, but the first job out of college was as a reporter with the Arkansas Democrat. By that time, I had remarried and was known as Jan Meins, the author of a true crime book, Murder in Little Rock.. (I decided in 5th grade that I wanted to be a writer.) After college, I moved to Cabot, AR, where my kids finished school...Expand for more